Sweet song
by kouw
Summary: In the middle of the night, Charles Carson allows himself to feel his fear, which leads to skills of yesteryear being retrieved and the comforting of someone he treasures more than anyone


**A/N:** Today it's just an angsty oneshot - but we know how it will end, so that should sweeten the bitter pill a bit. As always I would love to hear your thoughts!

Thank you, Mel and Dee for your help! YOU SO OHSSSSUMMMM!

* * *

It's been decades since he's touched the black and white keys of a piano. The audience of the music halls of the North were used to players of baudy rhymes and notes shrill and flat, melodies out of rhythm, words depicting sailors and prostitutes. It was not the place for the songs he wrote in his bunk in the early mornings, the dawn breaking on another hopeless, lonely day. Songs of hope and love and comfort.

There's always been a piano in the Servants' Hall but he's never felt the need to play until tonight. He sits down and lays his fingers on the cool ivory, presses the keys down gently and it all comes flooding back. The poetry he once wrote, the order of the keys to create the soft, gentle melodies he longed for as a young man. The pain in his heart, the furious helplessness.

He plays, softly, clumsily at first, but the words fall from his mouth, a sweet song of a love lost to him and he almost cries. He has drunk too much (and alone - for the first time in a long, long stretch of time, weeks, months and she's not let on. She's kept it all from him and it angers him and worries him in equal measure that she would not speak of it to him. He knows it's because she wants to protect him and that she is probably scared that if she says the words out loud, things will be worse. But he needs her to be close to him, even when things are not right, when things are going wrong).

He'd had two glasses on the table. Only one he filled, again and again until he had to flee from the room because he could sense her in it, her scent somehow lingering from when she had come to him with a note from the wine merchant that afternoon. He felt her presence even though she wasn't there because she had sat across from him the night before and now he is singing - softly, the words of the sweet song he composed so long ago, for another woman who was kind and gentle, but swayed too easily from him.

She is different. She finds it hard to be away from him; he knows that now. She has not spoken to him about any of her pain, of her fears and he understands that the burden she carries is far greater than his agonising. That her hurt is greater than his, but the whisky he has drunk (Scottish like her, fiery and smooth at the same time and he always wants more, like he wants her, but she is somehow forbidden and the scotch had slid down his throat so easily) makes him feel his self-pity so acutely.

If he were a smoker, he'd be smoking now, hunched over the piano, hitting the keys with more and more confidence, the melody wrapping around him like a blanket, giving him some sense of safety. If he could be away from the house, he'd walk away - leave his coat in the hall and just go out, but he cannot leave her. Even if she is behind that locked door upstairs. He thinks of her in her bed, unable to sleep, like he is. He wonders if she is in pain and if she is despairing yet, like he is.

He wants to take her in his arms and tell her that things will be alright. He wants her to tell him that she will be fine, that she will not leave him and that she will stand by him, take his hand, steady him when he finds it hard to keep his balance. He would be lost without her.

* * *

She's taken a bath - a rather hot one - in hopes to chase away the cold that lingers within her, but it's not helped. The two blankets she has wrapped herself in only manage to make her feel locked away, imprisoned. The cold comes from loneliness, she thinks, and from fear. Nothing will make her feel warm. Not tonight, not any other day. She wrestles herself free from the cotton sheet and wool that cover her and she lies on her back, her breath hitching in her throat, her hand on her breast. She can only feel _it_ when she presses harder.

It's been a good while since she'd first noticed it. She had wanted to ignore it, had been almost offended that her body would allow such an intruder to slip in and take up residence in her breast. Not that her breasts are much more than marks of her being a woman (and not a machine either, but a flesh and blood human being who has chosen a solitary life within the confines of service, safe and secure, far away from failing crops and the constant crying of infants), but she's been very angry nonetheless.

And then came the moment she couldn't ignore it anymore and she had confided in Beryl Patmore - the only woman she knows, whom she felt she could trust. The other woman's touch had been distinctly odd. As impersonal almost as her own. Warm fingers, gently prodding where she had indicated.

It was the first time someone had touched her there in decades.

"Oh, it's a lump alright."

Fear had gripped her heart and she'd gone to see Doctor Clarkson, hoping he would tell her there was nothing to worry about. But here she is in her bed, a small scar on the side of her breast where he had punctured the skin with a needle (it had hurt, much more than she dared let on, not wanting to look like a weak little woman to the doctor, her fellow Scot), her hand gently curved over the soft mound.

She wonders if the intruder might kill her. If it's going to be a long, slow, painful journey or if it will be fast.

She doesn't want to die.

Her life may not seem like much to others, but she's reached the very top of her profession and she is respected by her peers. She is young still - well, not young perhaps, but not old. And what will she do when things go Southwards? How will she manage? She doesn't have anyone to look after her, no place to go.

Her thoughts start spiralling out of control when she thinks she hears sounds coming from downstairs. With a manic chuckle she wonders if _it_ may have affected her brain and she shuts the thought down immediately. Instead she slips from her bed, grabs her robe and makes her way downstairs.

The sounds of a piano grow louder as she comes closer to the Servants' Hall. The melody is drifting through the corridors and she sees that the green baize door to the Servants' quarters has been left open. She takes the stairs slowly, step by step and finds herself listening to the sorrowful song and the deep baritone of Mr Carson singing.

Her breath hitches.

There's longing in the rhyme and misery in the melody and she starts to cry without a sound. She realises suddenly that it is the first time she's cried since she found the lump. He sings of pain and loss and worry, of being lonely and helpless and she is shocked; not that he has found out there is something wrong, after all Beryl Patmore wears her heart on her sleeve, but because of the pain in his voice.

It's the last thing she had wanted. She doesn't want him to see her as a sick person, a dying person. She needs him - most of all people him - to see her as Elsie Hughes, Housekeeper of Downton Abbey. She needs him to see her as the person she is.

He doesn't hear her. Her bare feet on the cold floor are silent and she manages to keep her sobs from bursting free. When she puts her hand on his shoulder, he doesn't startle. He tilts his head, pulls up his shoulder, presses his cheek against her fingers, turns, kisses the soft skin of the back of her hand.

"I didn't know you played," she says, gripping his shoulder tightly.

"I almost forgot myself," he answers.

He returns to the keys, building a different song for her, the words smooth and full of longing, of love and tenderness. A song about being never finding the right words at the right time and that he knows she understands, but that it's not enough.

She leans against him as much as she can without getting in the way of his playing. Her breast is against his arm, his warmth radiates through the fabric of her robe and nightgown. Her tears cease and she kisses the top of his head (his hair is messy - a combination of the late hour and his exertions, no doubt).

He sings for her and not once does he say she should have told him. He wraps her up in his music and they both know that by the time the morning comes, they'll not speak of him touching the piano in the corner of the Servants' Hall. Not in front of the others, their charges. The children.

But everything is different now.

Though her feet are cold, the chill has left her bones and when the song ends, he turns and puts his arms around her. She stands between his legs and he lays his cheek against her chest. His breath a little heavy after all his singing, after all that pouring emotion and his breath whispers against the skin of her breast, the slope just visible from under the collar of her robe and the neckline of her nightgown (she's accidentally left it unbuttoned, but it doesn't matter).

His lips are soft and warm. She holds him against her and they stand like that for a long, long time.

"I'll look after you," he says, finally.

"Thank you," she replies.

"You need rest," he continues and pulls away from her and he can feel her softly sigh at the loss of contact.

"So do you, my love," she cups his cheek, tenderly runs the pad of her thumb over the faint stubble.

He lets out a shuddering breath and she steps away, helps him up. It's been hours since he'd drunk half that bottle away - drowning in it - but he is still unsteady and she holds his hand as they make their way to the attics. Her robe is slightly pulled to the side, her breast almost fully exposed and he marvels that something so beautiful and comforting can be the cause of his crippling fear - but the sensation of her pliable skin under his lips is still so vivid, his fear is only in the background now.

They stand by the dividing door and Elsie plunges her hand in the pocket of her robe and retrieves the keys. He stands before her, and he leans in. She reaches up, their lips meet.

When she finally makes it back to bed, she isn't so very cold anymore.


End file.
